The main event of my campaign on Monday was the Granada 500 programme, when each of the three party leaders was questioned by an audience from what was deemed to be the most representative seat in the country, Bolton East. (For many years Bolton East had been won by the party which formed the next government, but in 1979, dazzled perhaps by national attention, the electors got it wrong.) I enjoyed these occasions, feeling more at ease than when interviewed on a one-to-one basis. Somehow the fact that these were ‘real’ people with real worries helped me to relax. Judging by the ‘clapometer’ reading I won the contest.
But the following (Tuesday) morning there was a further opinion poll by NOP which showed Labour 0.7 per cent ahead. There was only one real question on people’s lips at that morning’s press conference: how would I react to the poll? I just brushed it aside, saying that I hoped it would stir Conservative Party supporters to go out and vote on the day. Not only did this line serve me at a difficult moment: I suspect it was a correct judgement. For if anything really threatened our victory it was complacency, and from this moment there was no chance of that. I went on to campaign in the North-West, finishing up, of course, by addressing a rally in Bolton, where the comedian Ken Dodd appeared on stage with a blue feather-duster to greet me. After Ken Dodd’s message from Knotty Ash — which he made sound a pretty true blue constituency — any speech would have seemed over-serious. But there was only one real message for this stage of the campaign, which was that those who wished to throw the Labour Party out of government must not fritter their votes away on minor parties, but rather vote Conservative.
Moreover, the same message had to be repeated insistently until polling day. It was my theme at the final press conference on Wednesday (2 May). I returned to it as I went around the London constituencies, finishing up at the Woodhouse School in Finchley — where I had to push my way through protesting feminists chanting: ‘We want women’s rights not a right-wing woman.’ As I drove back to Flood Street I felt the tiredness flow over me. I had had my chance and had taken it. It was oddly satisfying to know that whatever happened now was out of my hands. For the first time in many nights Denis and I had a full six hours’ sleep.
I woke on election day to learn from the radio news that all of that morning’s opinion polls showed the Conservatives with a lead ranging from 2 per cent to 8 per cent. Denis and I went out to vote at 9 o’clock in Chelsea before driving on to Finchley, where, as was my wont, I toured the committee rooms followed by photographers. I went back to Flood Street for a light supper and to try to have some rest before what I knew would be a long evening. At the Finchley count in Barnet Town Hall, where I arrived shortly after midnight, I kept out of the way in a side room, equipped with a television and supplied with coffee and sandwiches, where I could listen to the results as they came in. Roger Boaden was with me, supplementing the television reports with early information telephoned through from Central Office. I kept a running tally, referring to the detailed briefing which Keith Britto had prepared for me. The first few results suggested that we had won, though among them was the upsetting news that Teddy Taylor had lost Glasgow Cathcart. The projections of our majority steadily began to mount. Local councillors, my Constituency Chairman and his wife, my agent and others came in and out looking more and more cheerful. But I deliberately suppressed any inclinations to premature euphoria: calculation, superstition and above all the knowledge that it is easiest to cope with bad news when you are not expecting good entered into this. In the end, however, not even I could remain non-committal. It was clear to everyone by the time I went out to hear the results of my own count that we would form the next Government.
The events of the early hours of Friday — the welcoming clamour of supporters at the count, the visit to Central Office, the warmth and relief of brief relaxation with my family — are no more than blurred recollections. That afternoon’s visit to Buckingham Palace to receive authority to form a government and my subsequent arrival at Downing Street I have described elsewhere.[62]
The scale of the victory took everyone — or almost everyone — by surprise. It was not just that we had won an election: we had also won a new kind of mandate for change. As the psephologists and commentators mulled over the detailed results, the pattern of our success bore this out. We had won a majority of forty-three seats over all other parties. The 5.6 per cent national swing from Labour to the Conservatives was the largest achieved by either — and our 7 per cent lead over Labour was also the largest — since 1945.
Equally significant, the biggest swing to us was among the skilled workers; and over a third of that lead had apparently built up during the campaign. These were precisely the people we had to win over from their often lifelong socialist allegiances. They were confronted in a particularly acute form by the fundamental dilemma which faced Britain as a whole: whether to accept an ever greater role for government in the life of the nation, or to break free in a new direction. For these people, above all, it was a severely practical matter of choosing whether to rely on the comforting security of state provision or to make the sacrifices required to win a better life for themselves and their families. They had now decided to take the risk (for it was a risk) of voting for what I offered — for what in a certain sense I knew that I now personified. I would always try to keep faith with them.
PART TWO
Beginning Again
On 28 November 1990, as I left 10 Downing Street for the last time eleven years, six months and twenty-four days after I first set foot there as Prime Minister, I was tormented by a whirl of conflicting and confused thoughts and emotions. I had passed from the well-lit world of public life where I had lived so long into… what? Yet, though I may have leapt — or been pushed — into the dark, I was not in free fall. I had my family and my health. I also found that there was an abundance of friends to give me moral and practical help.
Alistair McAlpine lent me his house in Great College Street, close to the Palace of Westminster, to serve as a temporary office. When Denis, Mark and I arrived there, I found a little sitting room for me to work in. John Whittingdale, who had been my Political Secretary as Prime Minister, and several other old and new faces were waiting to greet me. As for our own house, which Denis and I had bought in Dulwich partly as an investment and partly to provide for emergencies (though we had hardly foreseen this one), neither of us really wanted to keep it. It was too far from Westminster and somehow in spite of all that had happened we both assumed that whatever else I was to do, ‘retirement’ was not an option. I wanted and probably needed to earn a living. In any case, I would have gone mad without work.
It took some time before we found somewhere suitable to live; to begin with we were lent a lovely flat in Eaton Square by Mrs Henry Ford. But finding work to do was certainly no problem. There were countless letters to write in answer to messages of commiseration, which had deeply moved me. Some of my correspondents were in despair. I, myself, was merely depressed.
I was fortunately distracted by immediate personal matters. Christmas was less than a month away, and my departure from Downing Street meant that all my plans for Christmas at Chequers had to be cancelled. I needed to book a hotel for our Christmas party (my own house was stacked high with packing cases from eleven and a half years at Downing Street and Chequers), re-invite my guests now cheated of Chequers, order a new set of non-Prime Ministerial Christmas cards, and see that all the bills were paid.